Here is my initial assessment based off of 5-7 hours of gameplay.
It is very hard to not compare this to World of Warcraft, because the whole feel of the game seems to a targeted effort to attract disaffected/disillusioned WoW customers who want an alternative fantasy world to do questing and raids in. It has many of the same familiar, perhaps stale, WoW mechanics such as spell interruption/delay and multipule spell damage types (death magic ect), but adds new elements such as firing ranged weapons while moving.
I think it is fairly safe to say that Rift is essentially a carefully crafted net that fits nicely around WoW, catching the runoff, snapping up the ragequitters, and snatching anyone else who is bored as hell with WoW.
As I said earlier, the game looks like WoW, but with a Koreanish-style, which is to say that it looks fresh from a Western perspective, but not over the top, it's closer to looking like Aion than to WoW imo.
However, the graphics place a large drain on cpu resources. The game is sharp and really requires a current gaming rig, which I don't have, to fully enjoy full graphics settings. I have the game basically set at medium, and I experienced graphics-based lag in several areas.
Tale of the tape:
Intel Core 2 Quad
2.67 GHz
6 GB ram
Vista 64 bit
GeForce 9600 GT
Character creation is passable, cosmetics are not as detailed as some games (age of conan) but better than many others (Lord of the Rings Online/World of Warcraft).
The best part of the game is the skill tree, which consists of three subclasses (maybe more eventually) within a general archetype. So for example major archetypes are mage, warrior, cleric and rogue. You can specialize on a single paradigm in subclass selection, making a dps cleric for example like I did, is as simple as choosing 3 souls or subclasses that are dps-oriented. You could however, make a series of divergent selections and create a cleric who does well in soloing, who for example has a pet, who can heal single targets fairly well and does respectable dps.
The greatest strength will end up being a major weakness as well imo. Class balance in pvp is a huge issue, and is an area that other mmos still struggle with, Warhammer and Age of Conan for examples. Because of the huge amount of class-subclass combinations, you can bet there will be tons of overpowered builds, and this will be most apparent and disruptive during pvp. Also, I can tell right away that marksmen (a rogue subclass) will be frustrating in pvp, perhaps the most overpowered class, because they can kite like crazy..being able to shoot while moving is already hard to counter, but they can also use many 'spells' or special abilities on the move as well. This coupled with the ability to teleport is going to make for many sadfaces.
The UI is almost a direct port form WoW, which is not a bad thing because I think that WoW's interface is excellent.
Given the buzz surrounding it, Rift will almost certainly be 15$ USD a month.
I have no idea how mass pvp is handled, if there are battlegrounds or other pvp-instances. I will be looking into this asap.
I don't think I will be taking my wallet out for Rift any time soon, but it is tempting as hell to do so. The main reason why I will not be getting Rift, or prob will not, is the graphic intensity/system requirements. The lag due to particle effects is really a buzz kill. And boy, they LOVE environmental particle effects, at least in the newb area. I think all the incomming particle rich spells or catapult shots, whatever they are, were put in to cover up the fact that you are basicly doing nothing but running back and forth doing 'kill x monster/fetch x item' quests.
However, it would be nice to get in on the ground floor because I do think this game will do pretty well for itself, barring any major fuck ups at launch. Generally, I think the game will get good reviews and will have an established population pretty quickly. However, they need to make sure that the game has game content for all levels, many newer mmos make the mistake of not having end game content at launch, or go light on mid game content. They had better have it all or be fast with content updates, otherwise subs will drop within a few months.
The initial unfounded/untested, totally barebones and from the gut/off the cuff rating I would give here:
Rift gets a 8 out of 10 for PVE if I take the perspective of a unhappy WoW player
A 8/10 for PVE if I was a Age of Conan player looking for an upgrade
or a 7/10 if you're looking for a fantasy mmo based on its own merits
Author
Topic: Rift: Planes of Telara (Read 28711 times)